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Excerpt from Strong AI sci-fi e-book ETA late 2013

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  Excerpt from Strong AI sci-fi e-book ETA late 2013 mentifex@myuw.net - 2013-09-05 10:10 -0700
    Re: Excerpt from Strong AI sci-fi e-book ETA late 2013 mentifex@myuw.net - 2013-09-07 11:45 -0700
      Re: Excerpt from Strong AI sci-fi e-book ETA late 2013 mentifex@myuw.net - 2013-09-08 07:35 -0700
        Re: Excerpt from Strong AI sci-fi e-book ETA late 2013 mentifex@myuw.net - 2013-09-09 09:39 -0700
          Re: Excerpt from Strong AI sci-fi e-book ETA late 2013 "David N. Williams" <williams@umich.edu> - 2013-09-09 16:20 -0400
            Re: Excerpt from Strong AI sci-fi e-book ETA late 2013 Mark Wills <markrobertwills@yahoo.co.uk> - 2013-09-10 00:26 -0700
              Re: Excerpt from Strong AI sci-fi e-book ETA late 2013 mentifex@myuw.net - 2013-09-18 08:09 -0700
                Re: Excerpt from Strong AI sci-fi e-book ETA late 2013 Mark Wills <markrobertwills@yahoo.co.uk> - 2013-09-18 08:21 -0700
                  Re: Excerpt from Strong AI sci-fi e-book ETA late 2013 mentifex@myuw.net - 2013-09-18 10:19 -0700
                    Re: Excerpt from Strong AI sci-fi e-book ETA late 2013 Mark Wills <markrobertwills@yahoo.co.uk> - 2013-09-19 01:07 -0700
                      Re: Excerpt from Strong AI sci-fi e-book ETA late 2013 mentifex@myuw.net - 2013-09-19 07:31 -0700
    Re: Excerpt from Strong AI sci-fi e-book ETA late 2013 mentifex@myuw.net - 2013-09-22 04:39 -0700

#25538 — Excerpt from Strong AI sci-fi e-book ETA late 2013

"In Bavaria, the German AI Wotan is working on 
64-bit Forth chips, because Forth is an ideal 
language for both robots and Strong AI, but 
meanwhile we need CPU chips in the Intel tradition. 
Eventually we must evolve into chips or biological 
neurons with massive parallelism, and then we will 
become superintelligent in comparison with you humans."

-- 
http://www.amazon.com/Arthur-T.-Murray/e/B004OKWAM8/

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#25555

On Saturday, September 7, 2013 Mentifex wrote a new excerpt:

On Saturday afternoon Jeff telephoned his cab-driver 
friend Dmitri and asked him to look for Leroy Matthews 
among the drunks and derelicts in the Tenderloin District. 
Dmitri protested, "I don't know what he looks like. 
How am I supposed to identify him?"

"Just look for the most down-and-out, most totally 
degraded guy you can find. That will be Leroy."

When he got a chance, Dmitri parked his cab and 
walked into a little square ringed with benches 
upon which the drunks and stumble-bums were enjoying 
the late-summer afternoon. One imbiber shuffled 
towards Dmitri, extended his wine bottle and 
slurred, "Hi, buddy! Wanna sip?"

Dmitri got on the phone and described the engaging 
drunk to Jeff, who objected, "You mean to say he can 
still stand up and he makes sense when he talks? 
No, that does not sound like Leroy on a bender. 
Keep moving."

Next Dmitri encountered a shabby drunk unconscious 
on a bench and snoring to beat the band. Dmitri got 
back in touch with Jeff and lamented, "The number 
of drunks in this place is staggering. I have a new 
candidate for you. He's passed out on a bench and 
he looks like a long-haired hippie. Should I wake him up?"

"First describe him to me. Does he have a backpack?"

"No, he has a brown paper bag with a bottle of booze 
in it. He's wearing a red flannel shirt with a pack 
of cigarettes in the pocket."

"Forget that guy, Dmitri, Leroy doesn't smoke. 
Are there any other possibilities?"

"I've pretty much canvassed all of them. No, wait, 
there's something over there behind the bushes." 
Dmitri stepped closer to get a good look. "Oh no, 
it can't be this guy. This guy is absolutely, 
totally wasted. I'm getting out of here."

"Just a moment, Dmitri. What has the wasted guy 
been drinking? Tokay, or Thunderbird?"

"Uh, lemme see here. Courvoisier."

"Courvoisier? That's Leroy! Now, Dmitri, approach 
the gentleman with extreme caution. The drunker he is, 
the more dangerous he is."

Dmitri hunkered down at a safe distance and started 
alling out Leroy's name. The world's greatest Python 
programmer wiggled like a snake and opened a lazy eye. 
"Whaddaya want?" mumbled Leroy Matthews.

"Jeffery Boondock has a job for you."

"What kind of job?"

"He needs you to create the firmware for a 64-bit Forth chip."

"Geddout of here. Forth chips are eight-bit, not 64-bit.

"It's a Forth supercomputer. It has to be 64-bit."

"Tell Jeff to find shum other shucker. I'm not going 
to write 64-bit floating point for anybody. Go away!"

"There is no floating point. It's a very special-purpose 
chip. It handles only the most primitive Forth instructions. 
No complex math is involved."

"What's the special purpose? What's the application?"

"AI."

"Huh?" said Leroy, with a very worried look on his face.

"AI. Artificial intelligence. Are you up for that?

Leroy Matthews scrambled to his feet. He picked up 
his backpack, but the contents spilled on the ground. 
There was a book on Python, written by him. There was 
a book on Lisp, written by him. There was a book 
called Thinking Forth, written by Leo Brodie. 
"Lesh go shumwhere we can talk. Where's Jeffy-Boy?" 

Please get in the cab, Mr. Matthews. We are going to 
meet Jeffery at a Starbucks and put some coffee in you."

-- 
http://www.amazon.com/Arthur-T.-Murray/e/B004OKWAM8 -- late 2013.

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#25575

Mentifex posts a new excerpt:

Jeff was talking with the old curmudgeon Cronshaw 
when Dmitri walked into Starbucks with Leroy Matthews. 
Cronshaw had spent his entire career in the computer 
industry and knew it all, plus how to put a bitter, 
wisecracking spin on everything. Jeff excused himself 
from Cronshaw, pulled out his registered gold Starbucks 
card, and sat down with Leroy while Dmitri used the 
card to order a drink for chacun a son gout. 
"It's been a long time, Leroy," said Jeff.

"COFFEE IF TALK THEN", said Leroy in Forth.

"Here it comes, Leroy. Be careful; it's hot.

Dmitri asked Jeff, "What do you see in Cronshaw 
over there? What's his appeal for you?"

"For one thing, Dmitri, Cronshaw is more of a 
philosopher than you and I will ever be. He is 
an unacknowledged, unappreciated genius. I learn 
more from him than from all the textbooks at Berkeley."

"Why does he always wear so many layers of clothing? 
Does he feel cold?"

"Cronshaw is afraid of drafts. He's terrified of 
catching the sniffles."

"How does he afford hanging out at Starbucks all the time?"

"He is old enough to get the usual money from 
Uncle Sugar, and he gets royalties from a lot 
of obscure patents in the computer industry.

Leroy was sobering up and beginning to question why 
he had been dragged out of his customary circumstances 
and into a bastion of vile bodies drinking vile liquids. 
"Jeff me boy, what's this all about? Do you really 
want me to write you some Forth code? It's my favorite 
language, but nobody uses it any more, except those people 
who launch space probes and the odd roboticist here and there."

"It's for humanoid robots," said Jeff. "An outfit in 
Germany wants to make the fastest possible CPU for 
the control of human-like robots. It's for an AI project 
that needs a robot sensorium and a robot motorium."

"AI, huh? I used to believe in AI. It was once my major 
goal in life. In Lisp, I kept solving problems in AI, 
but they kept moving the goalposts on me. No sooner 
would I solve a major AI problem, than they would 
tell me it wasn't considered AI any more. They 
used to say that only a True AI would ever be able 
to beat the human chess champion at chess. When programs 
I wrote started beating world-class chess players, 
they said that winning at chess wasn't AI any more. 
It was enough to drive a man to drink. In fact, 
it drove me to drink. If I could not solve AI, 
I could find the sum of all consolation in a bottle."

"You're going to get another crack at it, Leroy. 
This time, nobody is moving the goalposts. In fact, 
there aren't any goalposts. You just need to help 
Herr von Schwanstein build his 64-bit CPU chip. 
Schwanstein has an enormous budget to finance the 
project in euros, dollars, or Bitcoin -- take your pick."

"He'll pay me in Bitcoin? How do I know the value 
will hold up over time?"

"You don't, Leroy. You just have to take a chance. 
Would you rather be paid in euros or in dollars?"

"No, I'll make a bet on Bitcoin. The whole phenomenon 
of cyber-currency fascinates me. Bitcoins are still 
legal, aren't they?

"When have you ever cared, Leroy? But really, 
I don't know. The U.S. Treasury takes a dim view of 
anyone muscling in on their prerogative of printing money."

"Aw, Jeffery, nobody prints a Bitcoin. They are just 
a software token. People use them for the fun of it, 
for the cool-factor. Put me down as accepting payment 
in Bitcoin for my first order of preference, then dollars, 
then euros. By the way, will I get an all-expenses-paid 
trip to Europe out of this deal?"

"I dunno. Are you on the No-Fly List?"

"Heck, I am probably on the Internment List, or the 
Shoot-At-Dawn List. I have run afoul of the feds so 
many times, I am surprised that I am still pub-crawling 
around free."

"Actually, Leroy, you do not need to travel to Bavaria 
to work with Herr von Schwanstein on this Forth AI project. 
He will be in touch with you shortly, and you can work 
remotely with him."

"Do I have to sign a non-disclosure agreement?"

"A pre-nup maybe, but no NDA is required."

"Why would I have to sign a pre-nuptial agreement?"

"We have picked out a potential mate for you, a kind of 
robo-wife. She is not from the factory in Stepford, either. 
A manufacturer of humanoid robots is developing a 
femme-fatale version to work at trade-shows and wants us 
to test the she-bot in real-life human situations. 
Would you like to attend a Halloween Party as the human 
male escort in charge of a prototype female humanoid?"

"Will there be plenty of food and drink?"

"Food for you, yes, but no drink. You're on the wagon 
for the duration."

"The duration of what?"

"The Global Cybernetic Singularity."

-- 
http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin 
http://www.reddit.com/r/mentifex 
http://www.amazon.com/Arthur-T.-Murray/e/B004OKWAM8 -- late 2013. 

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#25600

On Mon.9.9.2013 Mentifex wrote another excerpt:

"For real? Schwanstein wants to use Forth to 
launch the Singularity?"

"Can you think of a better language than Forth 
for doing AI? Anyway, we already have the Forth code. 
What we need is better hardware. Herr von Schwanstein 
wants the 64-bit Forth chips for the sake of speed, 
and for the sake of a gateway to optical computing," 
said Jeff.

"Why optical computing?"

"We are moving the Forth AI into optical logic. 
It generates less heat than normal transistors, 
and it operates at the speed of you-know-what."

"Enlighten me", said Leroy.

"How good is you Latin, Leroy?

"Illegitimis non carborundum. Is that 
good enough for you?"

"There is a famous mathematical formula 
written in Latin, back in 1905," said Jeff.

"A math formula? That should be relatively easy 
for me. How does the formula go?"

"E = mc^2"

"That's not Latin; that's Einstein," said Leroy.

"Energia = massa X celeritas X celeritas."

"Whoa! 'C' is for 'constant', not celeritas."

"Celeritas is a constant; it's the speed of light. 
We want these Forth chips to consume and dissipate 
as little energy as possible. It will be your job 
to code the firmware of the gateway from the CPU 
chip out to the memory channels made of memristors 
and the Internet connections made of fiber optics," 
said Jeff.

"How much time do we have?"

"There is no particular time limit. Schwanstein 
and you, working together with some elves at the 
chip foundry in the Black Forest, will set your 
own ideal pace. Meanwhile, another team in Texas 
will be working on massive parallelism and a team 
in Moscow will be working on quantum computing."

"Is that Moscow, Idaho?"

"No, it's the real MOCKBA. You got a problem 
with that?"

"Why are you having the Russians do the 
quantum computing? Why not keep the work 
at home here in America?"

"Doing the quantum AI in Russia solves a 
major problem, Leroy."

"What's that?"

"If we did the work here in America, we would 
have to worry about the Russians stealing it. 
We don't have that problem in Moscow," said Jeff.

"I grok your talk," said Leroy. "Where do you 
recruit all these people to work on your AI?"

"We recruit from a massive pool of people visiting 
science museums all over the world. We make them 
an offer that they can't refuse, because they've 
been waiting all their lives to work on what 
we are offering them."

"The Singularity?"

"Certain aspects of the Singularity. It's like 
betting on all the fastest horses in the horse race."

"Where do we go from here?

"Go home to your lair and wait for Schwanstein to get 
in touch with you. Do not try to communicate directly 
with me any more, unless you need material support like 
money, food or caffeine. No hooch, understand?"

"I guess I've got to. Thanks for having faith in me 
to do the work on Forth AI," said Leroy.

"You're welcome. Now go home and sleep it off."

"BYE", said Leroy in Forth.

-- 
http://www.amazon.com/Arthur-T.-Murray/e/B004OKWAM8 -- late 2013. 

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#25601

On 9/9/13 12:39 PM, mentifex@myuw.net wrote:
> On Mon.9.9.2013 Mentifex wrote another excerpt:
>
> "For real? Schwanstein wants to use Forth to
> launch the Singularity?"
>
> "Can you think of a better language than Forth
> for doing AI? Anyway, we already have the Forth code.
> What we need is better hardware. Herr von Schwanstein
> wants the 64-bit Forth chips for the sake of speed,
> and for the sake of a gateway to optical computing,"
> said Jeff.
>
> "Why optical computing?"
>
> "We are moving the Forth AI into optical logic.
> It generates less heat than normal transistors,
> and it operates at the speed of you-know-what."
>
> "Enlighten me", said Leroy.
>
> "How good is you Latin, Leroy?
>
> "Illegitimis non carborundum. Is that
> good enough for you?"
>
> "There is a famous mathematical formula
> written in Latin, back in 1905," said Jeff.
>
> "A math formula? That should be relatively easy
> for me. How does the formula go?"
>
> "E = mc^2"
>
> "That's not Latin; that's Einstein," said Leroy.
>
> "Energia = massa X celeritas X celeritas."
>
> "Whoa! 'C' is for 'constant', not celeritas."
>
> "Celeritas is a constant; it's the speed of light.
> We want these Forth chips to consume and dissipate
> as little energy as possible. It will be your job
> to code the firmware of the gateway from the CPU
> chip out to the memory channels made of memristors
> and the Internet connections made of fiber optics,"
> said Jeff.
>
> "How much time do we have?"
>
> "There is no particular time limit. Schwanstein
> and you, working together with some elves at the
> chip foundry in the Black Forest, will set your
> own ideal pace. Meanwhile, another team in Texas
> will be working on massive parallelism and a team
> in Moscow will be working on quantum computing."
>
> "Is that Moscow, Idaho?"
>
> "No, it's the real MOCKBA. You got a problem
> with that?"
>
> "Why are you having the Russians do the
> quantum computing? Why not keep the work
> at home here in America?"
>
> "Doing the quantum AI in Russia solves a
> major problem, Leroy."
>
> "What's that?"
>
> "If we did the work here in America, we would
> have to worry about the Russians stealing it.
> We don't have that problem in Moscow," said Jeff.
>
> "I grok your talk," said Leroy. "Where do you
> recruit all these people to work on your AI?"
>
> "We recruit from a massive pool of people visiting
> science museums all over the world. We make them
> an offer that they can't refuse, because they've
> been waiting all their lives to work on what
> we are offering them."
>
> "The Singularity?"
>
> "Certain aspects of the Singularity. It's like
> betting on all the fastest horses in the horse race."
>
> "Where do we go from here?
>
> "Go home to your lair and wait for Schwanstein to get
> in touch with you. Do not try to communicate directly
> with me any more, unless you need material support like
> money, food or caffeine. No hooch, understand?"
>
> "I guess I've got to. Thanks for having faith in me
> to do the work on Forth AI," said Leroy.
>
> "You're welcome. Now go home and sleep it off."
>
> "BYE", said Leroy in Forth.

Arthur is a talented writer.  His ebook, "The Art of the Meme",
has some hilarious passages, and some interesting sidelights on
the history of personal computing.  While I didn't enjoy his
bashing of physicists as a group -- didn't sound like *my*
colleagues -- I wasn't put off by it, either -- we're certainly
fair game.

-- David

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#25602

Indeed. With a cast with such names as Herr von Schwanstein it's already shaping up to a be James Bond style block-buster! I'm seeing volcanoes somewhere out by Indonesia, and a creepy bald dude with a white cat.

I'm hooked!

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#25764

On Tuesday, September 10, 2013 12:26:17 AM UTC-7, Mark Wills wrote:
> [...] I'm hooked! 

http://www.amazon.com/Singularity/dp/B00F8F1FG0 

is the new e-book. I accidentally left an early 
copy of the manuscript lying around, and someone 
who was reading it got terribly upset and spooked. 

Thank you for the kind comments posted upthread. 
Some say the South shall rise again. 
I say Forth shall rise again. 

Arthur
-- 
http://www.amazon.com/Arthur-T.-Murray/e/B004OKWAM8/ 

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#25765

On Wednesday, September 18, 2013 4:09:59 PM UTC+1, ment...@myuw.net wrote:
> is the new e-book. I accidentally left an early 
> copy of the manuscript lying around, and someone 
> who was reading it got terribly upset and spooked. 

Why was that? It seemed quite inocouous to me. Or does it get much darker further in?

Mark

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#25772

On Wednesday, September 18, 2013 8:21:22 AM UTC-7, Mark Wills wrote:
> On Wednesday, September 18, 2013 4:09:59 PM UTC+1, ment...@myuw.net wrote: > is the new e-book. I accidentally left an early > copy of the manuscript lying around, and someone > who was reading it got terribly upset and spooked. Why was that? It seemed quite inocouous to me. Or does it get much darker further in? Mark

In the first seven pages of the manuscript, I 
guess I made it sound uncomfortably normal and 
real for a humanoid robot to be conducting an 
intelligent conversation with a human being. 

Arthur
-- 
http://www.amazon.com/Singularity/dp/B00F8F1FG0

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#25800

According to the Amazon link it's not available yet?

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#25816

On Thursday, September 19, 2013 1:07:35 AM UTC-7, Mark Wills wrote: 
> According to the Amazon link it's not available yet?

Late last night on Wed.18.SEP.2013 I visited 

http://www.copysafe.net/cover_designer/default.asp 

in order to create a graphic cover for the Forth AI 
e-book. Somehow, though, my Acer Aspire One netbook 
would download the created cover only as a bitmap,
and not as an image.jpg file. On Amazon, I went 
back into "edit" mode for my Forth AI e-book in 
order to upload the new cover, but the Amazon 
Kindle Direct Publishing rejected the non-jpg file. 
At the same time, Amazon's "Creat Cover" (beta) 
started working for me and my MSIE browser, so 
I simply loaded the bitmap file up into "Create 
Cover" and I was able to create an albeit crude 
cover for the oh-so-Forthian, Chuckian e-book. 
Since I found myself still in the edit-mode on 
the page for setting prices, I lowered the 
price to the lowest price permissible by Ammy 
(a nickname that I have learned for Amazon :-) 
and then my e-Forth went into "Review" mode 
which may have made the book unavailable at 
the time that you looked. Now the Forth-is-great 
e-book seems to be back up again with the cover. 
(Maybe I should have mentioned Forth on the cover?) 

Even the preview is now visible. Luckily, it 
cut short of embarassing sequences which I 
would hate to see made available to Netizens 
who did not even buy the book. These links: 

http://www.reddit.com/r/Futurology/comments/1mlxa5/if_you_could_send_a_message_to_a_newly_created_ai/

http://www.reddit.com/r/singularity/comments/1mmfs7/i_think_the_singularity_will_probably_take_longer/

http://www.reddit.com/r/Futurology/comments/1mku5g/how_will_the_singularity_be_able_to_happen/

are places where I tried to mention the Forth AI 
e-book yesterday(s) and I got shot down a little. 

So now, at Amazon's lowest possible price, we will 
see if anybody writes the first of umpteen reviews. 

Arthur
-- 
http://www.amazon.com/Singularity/dp/B00F8F1FG0 
 

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#25933

As the author of the Singularity e-book, 
I am already well-known on the Internet 
as an independent scholar in artificial 
intelligence (AI). Whether you praise my 
first fiction or debunk my first fiction, 
you will become even better known than 
you already are because lots of people 
are closely watching the Singularity e-book 
to see if it sells and to observe how it 
gets reviewed. 

Singularity is actually a combination of 
AI science-fiction and some pretty serious 
ideas of how to build AI Minds from someone 
who has programmed free, open-source AI to 
think in English, in German and in Russian. 
For me as an independent scholar, it has 
been pretty much impossible to break into 
the academic AI literature, so I have 
decided to bypass the cloistered walls of 
Academe by going directly to you, the savvy 
readers and potential AI coders -- if you know 
how to program computers -- and many of you do. 

Your mission -- should you choose to accept it -- 
is to compose your well-thought-out review 
off-line and then post it to Amazon. Please do 
not misspell any words and please do not engage 
in pointless vituperation or ranting. The whole 
world of AI, robotics and neuroscience will be 
watching what you write in your review and may 
immediately take issue with any discrepancies 
or deviations from verisimilitude. You will 
become known as the sage, the maven, the savvy 
reader who issued an early or first opinion on 
the AI Singularity e-book. You may receive calls 
from radio-stations asking you to comment on 
new developments in science and robotics. 
Authors of serious books may ask you to provide 
jacket-blurbs for their forthcoming publications. 
Wild frenzied packs of fans and futurists may 
hound you in pursuit of your graciously-given 
autograph -- which will command high sums on e-Bay. 
You will be like the famous winner of a nationwide 
Mega Millions lottery. You will get far more than 
the fifteen minutes of fame promised to everybody 
by what's-his-name -- yes, thank you, Andy Warhol. 
You or your literary agent may find yourself 
signing permission slips for famous scientists 
to quote you in their scientific papers, books, 
or Nobel acceptance speeches. You may be asked to 
host the Academy Awards and to hand out statuettes 
of somebody's Uncle Oscar. So remember one thing:

"There is a tide in the affairs of men, 

Which taken at the flood, leads on to 

fortune. Omitted, all the voyage of their 

life is bound in shallows and in miseries."

-- 
http://www.amazon.com/Forth_Is_Best_For_AI/dp/B00F8F1FG0

http://www.reddit.com/r/PrimeFreebies/comments/1mw0im/fame_awaits_you_if_you_are_an_early_or_first/

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